There is no doubt in my mind that the game Dungeons and Dragons is causing young men to kill themselves and others. – Thomas Radecki
Every so often I run into an item in which prostitution somehow intersects with some other subject in which I’m interested, and because this one brings together several such topics – censorship, moral panics, infantilization of adolescents, prohibitionist lies, social constructionism, the drug war and Dungeons & Dragons – I just had to do an article on it despite the fact that it’s several months old.
Thomas Radecki has made a lifelong career out of minding other people’s business. As a young man, he felt the best path by which he could accomplish this was psychiatry: he graduated from Ohio State in 1973 and pursued his specialization in psychiatry, receiving his license to practice in 1977. In 1980 he founded the National Coalition on Television Violence, one of the earliest of the “watchdog” groups which became so popular with puritans in that decade; its rationale was that people (especially teenagers) are infinitely-malleable putty whose minds are warped by portrayals of violence (and sex, though that doesn’t appear in the group’s name) on television and other media. The way he claims to have come to this conclusion is quite interesting:
…his concern stemmed from his days in medical school, when he went to the movie A Clockwork Orange then saw a nurse and ”had this fantasy of me kicking and beating” her. He became convinced that violent entertainment could trigger real violence and warp attitudes to the point that ”we are taking a serious chance of causing the end of the world”…
His proposed solution? “…mandatory announcements on television saying violent entertainment is harmful.” Even among prudes, however, he was viewed as an extremist; Sam Simon of the Telecommunications Research and Action Center said Radecki’s “tendency to overstate things and exaggerate damages his credibility,” and Peggy Charren of Action for Children’s Television described his strategy as “the Chicken Little approach.” Perhaps she had the wrong barnyard fowl in mind; in a review of the Disney Channel Radecki said, “I was particularly disturbed by the Donald Duck and his nephews cartoons …”
But it was a different cartoon which eventually brought him to my attention. In 1983 the Dungeons and Dragons show premiered; like most ‘80s cartoons it was basically a commercial intended to get kids interested in a line of toys (or in this case, the popular role-playing game I had already been enjoying for three years). The (laughably bad) show seems to have done its job with Radecki, but in the wrong way; his interest took the form of an obsessive hatred for the game manifesting in a campaign to get it banned by convincing everyone that it caused murder and suicide. Radecki claimed to have personally investigated “8 or 9 cases of death due to role-playing games, and…[to have] familiarity with over 130 more”. He demanded that a warning be broadcast during each episode of the cartoon “stating that Dungeons & Dragons had been linked to real life violent deaths”, and testified to that effect as an “expert” witness in at least 12 criminal trials (all unsuccessful). His “evidence” largely consisted of incredibly tenuous connections (such as D&D books being present in the room of a teen who committed suicide), except when it was entirely fictional (such as a fictitious letter from the scare-novel Mazes and Monsters).
Fortunately for gamers, Radecki was by then widely recognized as a liar and a fraud; researchers whose studies he had misrepresented made public statements denouncing his interpretation of their work, and the University of Illinois School of Medicine debunked his claim to be a member of its faculty (he was not a teacher but rather a temporary, unpaid, volunteer advisor for a short time in 1983). He quickly fell out of favor after 1985, and in December of 1992 his license to practice psychiatry was revoked by the state of Illinois due to ”allegations of inappropriate sexual activity…with one of his female patients”; at that time he also he resigned leadership of NCTV.
But really compulsive busybodies just can’t let it go; deprived of his license to interfere in people’s lives via psychiatry, he decided to pursue another effective route of control by getting a law degree in 1998. He was also on the boards of various anti-drug and pro-censorship organizations throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s (including Tipper Gore’s infamous PMRC) and owned a fertility clinic called the Surrogate Parenting Institute. As a lawyer Radecki fought to have his medical license reinstated, finally succeeding in 2002; he then moved to Pennsylvania to specialize in addiction therapy. His probation ended in 2008, but his neuroses got him in trouble again last year:
…Thomas E. Radecki has agreed to the permanent voluntary surrender of his medical license…[for] over-prescribing patient medications and trading prescription drugs for sex…Authorities executed search warrants at Radecki’s offices in…late June. Evidence was also seized from [his] home…Radecki specialized in treating patients who are addicted to heroin and highly addictive pain pills through the use of a controversial prescription medication called Suboxone…The case remains under investigation by the Attorney General’s Office…
In the final analysis, I think it’s safe to say that the demons Radecki imagined he saw in cartoons, games and television shows were nothing more than the ones which have driven him to anti-social behavior for over 30 years.
A warning about the following Dungeons & Dragons “warning”: make sure you’re sitting down when you watch it, because otherwise you might find yourself rolling on the floor in laughter!
I absolutely love that routine! I actually had a player once who was very like the sniveling magic-user who wants to cast spells inappropriately; it may amuse you to know that he’s an MD now.
There are clips of this on YouTube which omit the dire warning, but it isn’t nearly as funny as when you hear the contrast between what the narrator claims D&D is about and the actual reality. When I heard this bit on the radio, they edited the piece so that the D&D skit between the frame ended at “But if there are any girls I want to DO them!”
Magic Missile, huh?
For my age cohort, the obsession over violent video games is a source of bemusement. We see these allegedly intelligent and authoritative people hemming and hawing over how things basically everyone has some exposure to nowadays is causing rare bursts of violent behaviour.
I played D&D as a youth, and I’ve not killed anyone. I’ve even played Call of Cthulhu and my sanity, such as it is, has survived.
This guy really liked sex. Being in our sex hating culture, rather than accept and enjoy his high sex drive, he rejected it, and became twisted. People often become moral nosey parkers to struggle with their own demons.
I totally agree with that diagnosis.
Psychiatry is like religion. It’s manipulated and abused in the same manner that religious fanatics have manipulated and abused religion for a millennium. It’s the new “God” named “Science” and … he cannot really be questioned after a seeming “consensus” of theologians, er I mean scientists, have pronounced him “correct” on a given matter.
By the way – I’ve been playing Mortal Kombat since it came out in the EARLY ’90’s. I can’t believe I’m still playing it!!
It doesn’t get any more violent than this and yet, in all these years I’ve played – I’m still squeamish about field dressing and butchering a deer when I go hunting …
Same here. Been playing Doom since I was in Elementary…..no real effect other than I occasionally wonder whether I should get the digitally remastered Doom 3 for the PS3.
Certain psychologists have always found fame and fortune by catering to popular biases. For me the prototype is Dr. Frederick Wertham, who put a major comic book company out of business in the 50’s and who basically ensured that for 20 years only Superhero comics could be made.
Also “Mortal Kombat!”
Ahem…. I still think Wayne La Pierre was still railing against the one from the early 90’s, since he also mentioned Splatterhouse. When he gave his press conference, I thought perhaps he had just stepped out of a time machine that had previously stopped at the Lieberman hearings.
I think if I had been him I would have pointed out that there are plenty of mass murderers who racked up impressive kill counts without the use of guns or having ever played video games, going back to Jack the Ripper. (I can only imagine what they blamed him on… he was even before comic books!)
Wait, so does that mean you own a Xbox 360?
If you do, I would suggest checking a game called Far Cry 3. It’s a fun game but it has the most ridiculous incidence of trafficking hysteria in fiction ever.
There’s a trafficking ring, but one that apparently deals only in white males over the age of consent.
I should totally email Maggie about that, might make a nice column idea.
LOL yeah but aren’t most of the island’s inhabitants batshit insane? There might be a slight pisstake in this game somewhere….
Yeah, but the trafficking ring is why everything is messed.
What you have described is pretty much the opposite of how science works. It is, however, the way politicians and media sometimes (mis)use it.
It’s a very old problem, aggravated in this case by the neuroses of the frontman. “Get rid of ‘X’, and everything will be fine!” Be it comic books (Wertham), communists in government (McCarthy), guns, or violence on television, there’s a simple solution to the problem facing us. And always, always, the solution fails. Because the ‘problem’ either never existed, or was a symptom of a far more complex problem that defies simple solutions.
Mind you, there are a few role-playing games that raise some serious questions about anyone who plays them (FATAL, available on the internet, but I highly advise having soap, water, and steel wool handy aif you look at it; but such games are a very small minority of the hobby.
You know, I watched A Clockwork Orange when I was fairly young and still think it’s a great, if disturbing, movie. And I’ve never fantasized about beating and kicking anyone.
I think this is the heart of the issue:
This is very common in politics. If you look at the numbers, the states that are the most socially conservative also have the highest rates of divorce, teen pregnancy, substance abuse, etc. And I think the most liberal industries are also those that are the most exploitative (Hollywood, certain segments of academia). People look to government the way they sometime look to God: to cure them of the ills they see in their own lives.
Ugh. That guy. In 1984 my mother came home from a church group and threw out the dusty D&D books and every dice in the house. The ladies had made spinners from cardboard.
Have you ever tried playing risk with 5 spinners? Lol
Harlot encounters can be with brazen strumpets or haughty courtesans, thus making it difficult for the party to distinguish each encounter for what it is. (In fact, the encounter could be with a dancer only prostituting herself as it pleases her, an elderly madam, or even a pimp.) In addition to the offering of the usual fare, the harlot is 30% likely to know valuable information, 15% likely to make something up in order to gain a reward, and 20% likely to be, or work with, a thief. You may find it useful to use the sub-table below to see which sort of harlot encounter takes place:
01-10 Slovenly trull
11-25 Brazen strumpet
26-35 Cheap trollop
36-50 Typical streetwalker
51-65 Saucy tart
66-75 Wanton wench
76-85 Expensive doxy
86-90 Haughty courtesan
91-92 Aged madam
93-94 Wealthy procuress
95-98 Sly pimp
99-00 Rich panderer
An expensive doxy will resemble a gentlewoman, a haughty courtesan a noblewoman, the other harlots might be mistaken for goodwives, and so forth.
[Good ol’ DMG p.192]
It will not surprise you to learn that I eventually created a courtesan character class. 🙂
And I a sacred prostitute class. I call them “vexyî” (rhymes with “way shy,” which they generally are not). I included this small paragraph in the description:
You do know that rules governing sex in AD+D exist, don’t you? I ussed to have them archived on my machine, but I’m not sure if they’re still there.
I never bought any editions after first; my own work expanded from there in a different direction from the official rules.
Something tells me that Radecki’s fantasies were quite violent, hence the ‘uncomfortable’ reaction towards A Clockwork Orange.
Ahaha……Mazes and Monsters, that was the film that Tom Hanks began his acting career on?
The whole Satanic panic was quite bizarre in hindsight, although my personal favourite is the Dark Dungeons religious cartoon, I’m off to read it now for old times sake.
As I’ve argued before, the Satanic Panic isn’t actually over; it’s just changed into “sex trafficking” hysteria. Read any “trafficking” story and substitute “cults” for “traffickers”, and you’ll see what I mean.
Panics/hysterias always go away, only to be replaced by the next terror lurking around the corner, ready to end Our Way of Life. Because there’s always power and money to be had by catering to the obsession of interfering with others For Their Own Good.
Even ‘respectable’ news sources can fall prey to this; I stopped watching ’60 Minutes’ after their hatchet job on D & D during the hysteria.
And don’t forget the “rainbow parties” that all the coool teenagers were doing!
And gawker has a “decade of moral panics” here.
http://gawker.com/5891061/
Except that as I pointed out in “The Naked Emperor“, that article totally ignores the biggest moral panic of the decade.
Those were all about teenagers, though. Rainbow parties. i-Dosing. All things that teenagers were supposedly doing. The fear-mongers aren’t claiming (yet; we’ll see where this goes) that teenagers are behind all the sex trafficking that’s going on in every city anywhere, despite the frightful lack of evidence.
They’re claiming that teenagers are the primary victims of “sex trafficking”, though. It’s the same thing: “The modern world is destroying our helpless children!!!!”
You’ve got a point. I have to admit, it’s even a good one. It isn’t something we’re supposed to believe that teenagers are doing to themselves, but it’s getting close. Let the rumor get started that American teens are becoming trafficked sex slaves because American teens think prostitution is fashionable and we’re there.
the hypocrisy would be sad if it wasnt so common
Yeah, the malleability of the teenage mind is wildly overstated, and this charlatan is one of the worst in that regard. Attacking an innocent hobby such as D&D is really what crosses the line though.
That said, many forms of “bad behaviour” emerging today are the product not of culture pressing young people do behave like that, but rather NOT pressing them to not behave badly.
I turn 47 this month. Today’s teenager are killing each other less than my generation did at that age. They have less pregnancy than my generation did at that age. They not only have fewer drug overdoses than my generation did at that age, they have fewer drug overdoses than my generation does NOW. High school graduation is at a forty year high. Today’s teenagers engage in more volunteer work than my generation did at that age.
Today’s young people are awesome, almost like they’re some sort of new and improved human being. Are they perfect? No, but what generation is. On average, though, they’re just better than we were, and to some extent, are.
SB,
I’m 58. Now for the downside: they still have a much higher rate of STD’s than my narcissistic generation (did it sooner and much, much faster); they still have a much higher pregnancy rate even with more contraception available with less stigma than my generation; they have a higher level of self-inflated self-worth (called self-esteem) and entitlement; and they will be recovering addicts of their helicoptering parents’ protectionism.
Otherwise, I agree with you.
“they still have a much higher rate of STD’s than my narcissistic generation”
This is much blared by our news media, based, they say, on a Centers for Disease Control study which nobody seems to be able to find. There is a chart, but we know nothing of the selection, nor do we know if it adjusts for the fact that more diseases are classed as STDs than were in the late Sixties and early Seventies. So do they really have a higher rate of STDs, or is it just that more of the Ds they (and your generation, and mine) have are classed as STDs? Until somebody can find this study, we don’t know. Overall STD rates are down dramatically from the Eighties and Nineties, according to the Kinsey Institute.
“(did it sooner and much, much faster)”
Wrong and… exactly what does “faster” mean, as opposed to “sooner?” “Much, much faster.” If what you mean overall is that they start having sex at a younger age, then no. The age of first sexual intercourse in the United States averaged 16.9 years for males and 17.4 years for females as of 2007. (first page, this report from the Kinsey Institute) This has remained fairly steady since the 1970s (your generation). It was a touch higher in the 1980s (talkin’ ’bout my generation).
“they still have a much higher pregnancy rate even with more contraception available with less stigma than my generation;”
Bullshit. Teen pregnancy rates are at historic lows.
“they have a higher level of self-inflated self-worth (called self-esteem) and entitlement”
What does that even mean? It means that you are doing what every generation does: you see some annoying young people and proceed to diagnose an entire generation. Since volunteerism is up, pregnancy is down, graduation is up and violence is down, their “higher level of self-inflated self-worth” and of “entitlement” doesn’t seem to be doing them or anybody else any harm, assuming of course that it even exits.
“and they will be recovering addicts of their helicoptering parents’ protectionism.”
See above, under “self-inflated self-worth”
This essay was all gorgeosity and yumyumyum. Me droobies, they all liked it like they like a mikba. I gotta be takin’ a leave, now. Gonna listen to some Ludwig V.